Graphical Analyses of Seattle’s Bicycle Sharing System

We find the orignal information for this project here.

1 Introduction

This is a report and analysis on Seattle’s bicycle sharing trends. The data includes weather reports for the area (excluding summer logistics), the station locations, as well as trips taken by cycle riders. Future explorations of this type of data could include investigating more extensively overall public transportation data trends for this area. This would serve to establish a better understanding of public transportation trends. Interestingly enough, this transportation company has since dissolved and the data points that were collected from this company are therefore older. Thus, these trends are potentially not reflective of bicycle sharing as it stands in Seattle to date.

2 Station Locations

Look how widespread the rental stations are all over Seattle (see Figure 2.1)!

  n_distinct(install_date)
1                        9

# A tibble: 9 x 2
  install_date count
        <date> <int>
1   2014-10-13    50
2   2015-05-22     1
3   2015-06-12     1
4   2015-07-27     1
5   2015-09-15     1
6   2015-10-29     1
7   2016-03-18     1
8   2016-07-03     1
9   2016-08-09     1

  n_distinct(station_id)
1                     58

Figure 2.1: Seattle Bike Station Locations

2.1 Locations (zoomed)

For optimal viewing, here are the station whereabouts with some zoom for location precision.

Figure 2.2: Closeup

Look at all those stations! Its hard to believe this company managed to go out of business!

2.2 Current Dock Count

Figure 2.3: Bike Count

Quite a few bikes to choose from!

2.3 Change in Number of Bike Docks Per Station

Figure 2.4: Bikes Per Station

11 stations lost bike docks, 39 docks stayed the same, 8 stations gained docks.

3 Number of Rides Per Day

Figure 3.1: Daily Riders

People really like going on fall and spring rides multiple times a day. Can you blame them though, Seattle in the fall is remarkable!!

4 Plotting trips per month (by season; excluding summer)

 [1] "trip_id"           "starttime"         "stoptime"         
 [4] "bikeid"            "tripduration"      "from_station_name"
 [7] "to_station_name"   "from_station_id"   "to_station_id"    
[10] "usertype"          "gender"            "birthyear"        
[13] "start_dt"          "stop_dt"           "start_date"       
[16] "stop_date"         "ym"                "Season"           

Figure 4.1: Trips by season, per month

5 Converting Trip Duration from Seconds to Minutes

Figure 5.1: Conversions

6 Number of Trips by Day of Week

Figure 6.1: Weekday Trips

7 Number of Trips Per Time of Day

Figure 7.1: Daily Trip Log

8 Number of Trips by Member Type

Figure 8.1: Trips of Members v. Short-Term Pass Holder

9 Trip Duration by Member Type

Figure 9.1: Members v. Short-Term Pass Holder

9.1 Cost of a Biking Trip

Figure 9.2: Trip Cost for Members v. Non-Members

It is definitely worth it to be a member vs. a nonmember, there are many associated costs if you aren’t.(see Figure 9.2)!

10 Bicycle Sharing Member Demographics

Riders tend to be aged towards the upper 20s, but this number could be misleading because we don’t have any real identifiers for the users (i.e. is one 20 year old taking 100 trips a day, or if there are a ton of 20 year olds using the service one time).

Figure 10.1: Member Ages